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Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon” is a pointless, bloodless cinematic construct that seems obsessed with man’s capacity for cruelty – like almost all of his films.

In his sumptuously shot (in black and white), glacially paced story, we observe the residents of a small village in pre-World War I Germany as they move through several seasons. He gives us no reason to care about them.

During this period, the local preacher abuses his children while maintaining a pious front. The local doctor abuses his female assistant, both sexually and verbally. And the local children perform various acts of violent cruelty – but they do it secretly enough that they aren’t caught. The local teacher suspects them, even confronts them, though none of them will admit to it.

Haneke’s tortured point seems to be that these children are the future fervent followers of the Third Reich, little monsters-in-waiting, eager for their opportunity to apply their conscience-less beings to the destruction of Jews, Europe and the world. And their parents are either blind to the malignancy in their children – or suffer from the same character flaw themselves.

But Haneke’s film is the cinematic equivalent of watching someone pull the wings off flies – like almost all of his films.

Is it thought-provoking? Well, yes – except it provokes no thoughts that most of us haven’t already had in this area. Instead, it is, in its own interminable and quiet way, an act of voyeurism into people’s most hateful impulses. He might as well make a film about defecation, under the theory that it, too, is a sorry fact of life.

Unless you’re a dog undergoing house-breaking, you don’t need to have your nose rubbed in shit to be reminded that it exists. But that seems to be Haneke’s raison d’etre.

2 Responses to “‘The White Ribbon’: Monsters in training”

I must emphatically disagree with this review, which I find empty-headed and morally retarded. The reviewer is in such a rush (“Let’s keep this short…”) he doesn’t allow himself to approach the film on its own terms, or to read it in a moral light. Housetraining an animal by rubbing its nose in its own waste is in NO WAY comparable to showing human beings scenes of their own capacity for evil. Shitting is a natural, necessary, good process. Humanity’s CHOICE, its perennial favoring of cruelty over love, is a MORAL condition, the news of which is ALWAYS news. When we go deaf to that news, we’re screwed. It is because of dismissive and amoral analogies, like the reviewer’s, that stories like Haneke’s will always be necessary. Haneke’s “tortured point,” as described in the review, has more to do with what the reviewer imagines than with anything the film is actually doing. The description of the pastor as “abusing his children while maintaining a pious front” so simplifies the situation as to completely misrepresent it. Perhaps the reviewer found no reasons to care about the people in the movie is because the people are too recognizably human, too like PEOPLE and not enough like movie characters.

Exploring how one feels, what one sees, about the characters in The White Ribbon is one of the great gifts it gives us. I felt a wide range of emotions throughout, that is what is it FOR!! Of course, there is nothign new under the sun but what….?? we see “evil” then shuffle on to the next thing, been there done that? No of course not ..”the news of which is always news” Yes. BTW rubbing an animals nose in it does not in any way conribute to effective house “breaking”(interesting choice of words, perhaps the film is too close to home for some to be comfortably contemplated)